A Justice System for Us

The carceral state is a racist institution that divides the working class and creates a permanent underclass for bosses, landlords, and other abusers to exploit. We commit ourselves and our platform to our courageous community leaders who seek to break its stranglehold on communities of color, immigrants, and poor people. We envision a society in which our justice system heals us rather than locking us in cages.

Pledges

• We pledge to use our platform to organize around the Austin city police contract in 2020. We will collaborate with criminal justice organizers in the city to win as much oversight as possible.
• We pledge to take on police associations throughout the district as long as they fight against community oversight and accountability to the people.
• We pledge to work nationally and locally to shift resources from policing to social services, education, housing, and economic justice.
• We will organize alongside immigrant justice organizations, centering the voices of immigrants and linking the fight for immigrant justice with the fight against mass incarceration. We will work hard to change the narrative in this country around immigration, emphasizing the role of US foreign policy and exploitative trade deals and imperialism in spurring mass migration, and we will demand safety for people seeking a better life in this country.
• We will uphold the principle that being poor is not a crime in all of our work, drawing attention to the criminalization of homelessness, the cash bail industry, and the inextricable link between poverty and crime.
• We believe that all people deserve a vote. While working toward the restoration of voting rights for the formerly and currently incarcerated, we will seek out their voices in our decision making and policy writing.